Page 66 of The Lunatics

“Some. I told her that I’m open to the possibility of her not being monogamous.”

“But are you really okay with that?”

She sighed. “I don’t fucking know, honestly. I feel like I have to be; otherwise, I’m an asshole.”

“And what about sex?”

“Again, I’d feel like an asshole if we weren’t intimate at some point.”

“You can’t be the only one to compromise. That’s not fair.”

“I’m not,” she said, jumping to her mate’s defense. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to snap.”

I waved her off. “You don’t need to apologize to me. Do you know how many times I’ve wanted to snap at people in the past few days? I’m bonded to a Kolbeck.”

“Right. Of course you get it. I should have figured,” she said. “But I swear I’m not the only one offering to compromise. Actually, that’s part of the problem. Natalie said she’d try monogamy and abstinence.”

I frowned. “So… you’re both willing to do everything for each other’s sake and now you’re at an impasse as to how to move forward because you can’t decide who would be sacrificing or compromising what for the other?”

“Boom. Nailed it.”

I shook my head. “It must have been the Goddess who interfered. This is all too complicated for it to have been witches.”

“Wait, what? Witches?”

I told her about Michael’s assumptions about the witches messing with the bonding ceremony to strike at his family.

“Do you really think a thousand shifters missed their presence?” she asked when I was done. “The woods were crawling with wolves that night.”

“Apparently they can cloak themselves from us.”

“Enough that they fooled even the wards?”

“Oh, I didn’t think about that. I’ll have to ask Michael.”

She rubbed a hand over her face. “It still doesn’t make sense to me, even if they managed to sneak in. Because how could they know what the outcome would be? That Michael would even be bonded?”

“That’s a good point. I didn’t think about that, either. You know magic isn’t really my thing. I guess I just sort of hoped it was witches after he told me his theory. Because if itwasthe Goddess—”

I held up a finger and turned to face the direction we’d comefrom. Michael was somewhere nearby, closing the distance between us. A shadowy figure appeared down the street a moment later, moving at a brisk walk. My heart swelled to see him again, which was ridiculous because we’d been apart for less than half an hour.

“Done playing nice with others?” I called out.

“There are a lot of intoxicated people in your backyard who have developed a sudden allergy to clothing,” he answered.

Oh yes. This payback would do nicely. “Did the sight of so much wereflesh make you blush?”

He stopped a few feet from us and cut me a look that nearly froze me on the spot. “You are also not funny.”

“I feel like I’m missing out on the joke,” Gia said.

“Trust me,” Michael told her, “you don’t want in on it.”

“Well, then, I’ll leave you two to stew in your awkwardness alone. I promised Natalie we’d run together, and if people are already stripping, I don’t want to miss out on shifting with her.” She turned to me. “Talk more later?”

I nodded.

She hugged me and jogged away from us into the night.